Bike touring, that’s on a bicycle, self-propelled, is a great way to really see Australia. Sure you can rip a circuit on Highway 1 but maybe that can wait until you turn 70. If you are keen to really experience the Australian Outback, to have a trip to remember the rest of your life, you have to ride off that blacktop.

In a country as big as Australia there are plenty of off-road, well, off-the-main-road, trails to explore that hack through scenic territory and have the benefit of not much traffic.

The 900km Mawson Trail from downtown Adelaide through the Flinders Ranges has been set up specially for mountain bikes. As good a start to long distance off-road riding as any in Australia. The Trail, using mostly existing dirt roads, fire and farm tracks etc, passes through three of Australia’s best wine regions: Adelaide Hills, Barossa and Clare Valleys, old mining towns, Kapunda and Burra, some wildly remote parts, and the backdrop of the Flinders Ranges. Take a day or two off to climb Mt Remarkable or explore Wilpena Pound, ie a feature packed scenic adventure that can continue on to Arkaroola for the intrepid.

The Munda Biddi Trail, another purpose built long distance mountain bike trail is a complete blast. Long stretches, kilometres, of massive fun screaming down obscure single track. It’s not so easy to find a trail, feeling remote, isolated, bulk single track, most days, for a week and a half, great, free, if well ventilated, accommodation along the way, the opportunity to replenish supplies every three days, plenty of signage, mostly, detailed maps complete with topography sections, no traffic, no people, all within 35km of a major centre. Too rugged to be standard bike touring fare this is a digestible little adventure where after your day’s effort, maybe at 8 km an hour with a little walking the bike, you flop onto your sleeping bag still buzzing, if totally exhausted.

Cape York is a terrific ride. One of Australia’s most challenging bike adventures due to the terrain, (plenty hilly), the heat, (there’s a lot of it), roads, (can be soft but usually not for long), traffic, (far, far too much of it), the sheer distance, but it’s also one of the most fun. The 4WD track components are the most memorable, Cape Melville, Frenchmans Track and most of all the Telegraph Track, with plenty of opportunities for cooling off in the 26ºC creeks, sometimes a few hours between meeting fellow travellers, invariably in 4WDs, great campsites usually near water, there’s a lot to like.

The Oodnadatta, Tanami and Gibb River Road are now all unsealed “highways” with plenty of tourist traffic, but enormous distances between supply points. Gotta be prepared. The GRR is the current favourite for East Coast 4WDers doing the Outback safari thing. Don’t tell anyone but the road has had dramatic improvements in the last dozen years to cater to the tourist traffic, it ain’t half the rugged road it once was. Now it’s one third softish, but always rideable, one third great and the remainder, well, variable. Great to ride, scenic too, but plenty of traffic and company in peak Dry Season, (June, July, August).

Some of the best features in Kakadu National Park need some riding over unsealed roads to access. Many of the National Park’s more scenic attractions require some effort, even if it’s only 10km in to the magnificent Maguk, (swimming hole, err, above the falls, recommended), 50km for Twin Falls or 65km to the more remote Koolpin Gorge. There’s plenty to explore here and it’s all worth the sweat expended.

The Tasmanian Trail is a roller coaster horse trail, that can be used by mountain bikes, rather than the typical highway bike tour, that heads 500km from Devonport in the north of Tasmania through the Central Plateau to the south coast at Dover.

The Oodnadatta Track cuts through Australia’s driest landscape in South Australia. The off-road road to get you started on non-highway travel. A generally reasonable surface, if it hasn’t rained recently, in which case it ain’t, with a night or two out between the specks of civilisation along the way. Enormous expanses of nothingness reveal a surreal beauty, and Adam Plate’s roadside signage helps explain the surprisingly interesting features on the Track: the abandoned Old Ghan infrastructure, the Overland Telegraph Line, South Lake Eyre, Coward Springs, all the while heading for Central Australia.

The 1075km tuf, tuf, tuf Tanami Track, from Alice Springs to Halls Creek, well it ain’t quite so tough anymore. Often a terrific ride through serene, and surreal, spinifex country on an unpaved highway that cuts between the Great Sandy and the Tanami deserts. Following the closure of the Rabbit Flat roadhouse in December 2010 there is a daunting gap between Yuendumu and Billiluna settlements: 600km. That makes it the biggest gulf between civilisation specks on any major road in Australia. Doesn’t change the water situation significantly. You need the capacity to take water for 2 nights out. Renahan’s bore watertank to the Lajamanu Road turnoff tank at 198km is less than the next section to Billiluna, 286km. There’s more traffic than you would think, just watch out for those road trains heading to the mines. But the Tanami challenge is mostly in the mind. Experience it before the road is fully sealed.

The road up to Karijini National Park via Millstream Chichester National Park will get you right through the heart of the Pilbara. Many of Australia’s best features take a bit of getting to, by bike, and this area pays off on the required diversion. There’s a huge shock of those gorgeous gorges, and a sudden bunch of 4WD encased tourists after days of solitude hacking your way to the Hamersley Range from the coast through archetypal WA landscape.

The Gibbie/ Wickham track through Jutpurra National Park, the renamed Gregory National Park, is a challenge for keen off-road riders in the Northern Territory. Testing little adventure due to the gnarly track surface. Actually it’s one of Australia’s great off-road trail challenges: from the heart of nowhere to not much else via an obscure track at, say, 7.49km/hour average speed for 5 hours. So why tackle it? My guess, the promise of adventure of a full on, remote, rugged ride. This trail is a fair test of both bike and rider through some colossally uninhabited territory.

Travelling the south coast of Western Australia it’s best to modify the standard 130km/day bike tourist mentality through this astonishingly scenic corner of the continent. A dozen campsites near great inlets, plenty of National Parks to detour through, the Gloucester Tree climb, Cape Leeuwin to watch the Indian Ocean crash into the Southern Ocean in what feels like the end of the world, big surf smashing in at Yallingup, those huge Karri and Tingle tree forests, Margaret River wineries, Elephant Rocks etc. Not a route to hurry through.

The Duncan Road/ Buntine Highway takes you through some remote NT cattle country where you might see 4 cars a day. A mostly good, occasionally great, unsealed highway, once the main round Australia road, through cattle country with little traffic and plenty of water spots. Don’t be put off by that sign on the edge of Halls Creek: Kalkarindji 407km, there’s a whole lot of nuttin when you make it there. The waterholes: Carolines Pool, Sawpit Gorge, Marella Hole are as much of what it’s about as the, at times, sublime riding.

The Mereenie Loop joins a few tourist feature dots on the back route between Uluru and Alice Springs taking in features in the Macdonnell Ranges National Park: Stanley Chasm, Ellery Big Hole, Ormiston and Glen Helen Gorges, Mt Sonder, then Gosses Bluff and Kings Canyon. Not so much unsealed road, 150km actually, but the short sections of sand and longer sections of cobblestones, (need any fillings removed?), require plenty of (worthwhile) effort.

The Finke Road along the Old Ghan route gets into some lonesome country near the geographical centre of Australia. Not much traffic out here. For those who want a break from civilisation, phone coverage, other members of the human race, etc, and wonder what a post-apocalyptic landscape would feel like to inhabit, this is for you. And then you stumble across Eringa Waterhole. Generally OK, sometimes great, riding but there are occasional crossings of stray, short, sections of the altogether far too sandy Simpson Desert.

Here’s a few random articles to get you started …

South Coast, WA

This is the great secret in long distance riding across Australia, kind of like Victoria’s Great Ocean Road on steroids. Zip around the coast, plenty to see, not much in the way of traffic. What’s not to like?

Well, there is a bit, the first three that come immediately to mind: hills, wind and inclement weather. There’s lashings of all three. It’s a roller coaster, true, but you get to whizz down the hills and it’s mostly less than 20 minutes of up before the down. There’s a fair chance of wind behind you as you head east, that’s a plus, unless, of course, you are riding into it. The weather, basically there can be just far too much of it.